ARLINGTON — Bins brimming with books, sports equipment, art supplies, games and toys filled the gymnasium at the Salvation Army’s Community Center Thursday morning, as students from across North Texas set about sorting the donations before sending them out to children in need.

The National Football League’s Super Kids-Super Sharing program usually coordinates with two or three school districts in the host city, said Susan Groh, project manager with NFL Environmental.

But due to Super Bowl XLV’s regional nature, seven school districts and two Catholic diocese districts were involved with this year’s donation drive, the highest number of participating schools in the project’s history.

The participating school districts were Arlington, Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Dallas, Frisco, Grapevine-Colleyville, Irving and Lewisville, along with the Diocese of Dallas and Diocese of Fort Worth schools.

And that wasn’t the only record being broken at Thursday’s event: An hour into the collection about 22,000 donated items had been dropped off, already topping the total from last year’s program in South Florida. By the time all the donations were tallied, nearly 30,000 items had been collected by the North Texas schools.

Jack Groh, director of NFL Environmental, said the North Texas Super Kids-Super Sharing event set the bar for future Super Bowl host communities.

“It is bigger, better and a lot more fun than we’ve ever had running this program,” he said.

Maj. Ward Matthews of the Salvation Army’s Dallas-Fort Worth command thanked the North Texas schools for working together on the Super Kids-Super Sharing project.

“It would have been a much simpler thing for one school to give some items to another school — but how boring would that have been?” he said. “We are meeting each other and we are sharing together.”

Courtnei Buckley, 12, from J.B. Little Elementary School in Arlington, enjoyed sorting children’s books and games into cardboard bins with the Super Bowl XLV logo.

“It’s not as hard as I thought it would be; it’s pretty easy,” Courtnei said. “It makes me feel good because I like doing things for other people. I’d rather donate something than keep it for myself.”

Sid Reggie, 11, of All Saints Catholic School in Plano, said he donated baseball gear and a scooter.

“At our school there was a big box and we brought in sports supplies,” Sid said.

Dallas Cowboys safety Orlando Scandrick and two Cowboy cheerleaders signed autographs and posed for photos with the children, and the team’s mascot Rowdy met students and parents.

NFL and North Texas Super Bowl XLV host committee officials unveiled plans in October for a $2 million program to help at-risk and homeless children that will be part of the Salvation Army’s central Arlington facility.

The Super Bowl XLV Youth Education Town will be financed by a $1 million donation from the Gene and Jerry Jones Family Arlington Youth Foundation and a matching Super Bowl Legacy Grant from the NFL.

“Since this will become the YET, it’s nice that they’re doing it here,” said Angie Bulaich, community outreach manager for the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee.

“We do big things here in Texas,” host committee president and CEO Bill Lively said of the record-breaking Super Kids-Super Sharing program.

Summer Keown, manager of environmental programs for Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, was at Thursday’s event to pick up ideas for next year’s Super Kids-Super Sharing program.

“We’re hoping to do something similar to this, so we came out to see it in action,” Keown said. “We know that everything’s bigger in Texas, but we’re going to put our own Indianapolis spin on it.”

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